Chapter Six: The Divine and Animal Souls

This episode explores the nature of the animal soul, explaining its complete parallelism to the divine soul in having ten powers—three intellectual and seven emotional—and three forms of expression through thought, speech, and action. However, the animal soul's core substance is spiritual impurity, acting as a "shell" that conceals the divine life force within creation. This concealing force is categorized into two types: one that contains some good, providing vitality to permitted physical objects which can then be elevated or degraded, and another, wholly evil, that sustains forbidden objects and cannot be transformed into holiness. The animal soul, deriving from the former category of concealment, possesses intellectual powers (wisdom, understanding, and knowledge) that serve as the source of its evil emotional traits, such as lust, anger, and boastfulness, by shaping and directing these desires. Furthermore, the animal soul "clothes" itself in "impure garments": these are defined as any thoughts, words, or actions not directed towards the Divine and its service, even if not overtly sinful. Unlike the divine soul's actions which elevate it, these mundane activities ultimately degrade the animal soul. The episode concludes by explaining that this physical world is referred to as a "world of concealment" because its inhabitants often perceive themselves as separate and independent from the Divine, receiving their life force through numerous spiritual contractions and diminutions, leaving the divine vitality in a state of "exile" within existence.